UCL Library Services

Search blog

About this blog

Library News For Artists is a blog to keep you up to date with new art resources in UCL Library. It includes regular info on new books, catalogues, dvds, websites, and anything else of interest. If you use an RSS feed reader (such as Bloglines) it will tell you each time a new entry is added.

The library has recently received a number of new audio CDs, including Surrealism reviewed, with original recordings by Breton, Duchamp, Dali, Man Ray and others; Radio teardrop by Destroy All Monsters, Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw’s punk rock/performance art band; Voices of Dada featuring rare interviews and poetry readings by Dada artists recorded between 1932 and 1967; and Zona radio, a collection of soundworks by Louise Lawler, Chris Burden, John Baldessari, Vito Acconci, Isa Genzken, Bruce Nauman, Robert Barry and others.

Tate has just launched the Tate Playerwhich allows online access to its video and audio archives. The Player provides access to interviews with artists such as John Latham, Antony Gormley and Jamie Shovlin; archive video of Joseph Beuys and Liliane Lijn; talks and discussions with Harland Miller, Hans Haacke and Susan Hiller; performances by John Cage and Stephen Willats; material from the audio archives including Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt and Robert Morris; plus an archive of the TateShots podcasts.

The Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection is a special collection of the John M Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It currently contains nearly 5000 artists’ books, multiples, video and audio recordings, periodicals, digital works, reference books, ephemera, exhibition catalogs as works of art, and examples of other experimental art practices.

The new digital library currently contains descriptions and discovery images for approximately a third of the items in the collection, with more added continuously. The site also includes a growing list of links to artists’ books resources world wide.

Talks from the 2007 Frieze Art Fair can now be downloaded from www.friezefoundation.org/talks. Talks available for streaming or downloading as an mp3 file include Dave Hickey on Custodians of culture; Ralph Rugoff and Tobias Rehberger on Theory & practice: art education today; and Roni Horn on Cultural cartography.

The Arts Council’s film collection, which chronicles over 50 years of British art, has been made available in digital form to the academic community following a three-year project by film researchers at the University of Westminster. It currently contains 460 documentary films drawn from the Arts Council England’s film collection, and there are plans to add more films in the future.

The Arts Council Film Collection features 20th Century British Art as well as important architecture, theatre, poetry and dance. Artists featured include Bacon, Spencer, Hockney, Moore and the Young British Artist (YBA) group. Some of the best filmmakers in the UK, including Anthony Minghella and Isaac Julien, were commissioned to make films for the collection. As well as focusing on individual artists, architects, writers and poets, the films document particular art movements that have continued to influence contemporary British Art, such as Surrealism, Dadaism, Futurism and Kinetic art.

The archive is accessible online at www.artsonfilm.org.uk to anyone in the academic community, and provides high resolution and full-screen quality footage.

Please note: Due to copyright restrictions films can only be streamed to ac.uk domain addresses.

The library now has access to the Art Index Retrospective database which means that, in conjunction with the Art Full Text database, you can now search for articles published in international art journals from 1929 to the present. Titles covered include Artforum, Studio International, Parkett, October, Screen, and several hundred others.